If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s hypocrisy. If you recall, Jesus of Nazareth didn’t tolerate it either. And right now, America is rampant with it.

This isn’t just about Donald Trump and Barack Obama. This isn’t just about politics. It’s about fundamental Christian values. To understand where I’m coming from, you need to understand where I came from.

I was raised in church. For churches, I was a child acolyte, child/teen/adult choir member, janitor, website and business card designer, Bible school worker, assistant production director, production director, young adult group leader, adult Sunday school teacher, communion server, bylaws reviser, and administrative board member.

I am classified as Caucasian, and I voted in the last presidential primary as Republican.

With that in mind, I remember how Jesus loved and helped sinners, but spoke very, very strongly against religious hypocrisy. Like what is happening in America right now.

“I’m not gonna play much golf, because there’s a lot of work to be done.” –Donald Trump

All right, so the title of this entry is hardly ground-breaking. Even supporters of Donald Trump say he lies (and may justify it by saying all politicians lie and they don’t care).

But comparing the number and type of Trump’s documented lies to those of hundreds of people in studies reveal a couple of startling things. Social scientist Bella DePaulo, who spent two decades studying liars and their lies, wrote “I study liars. I’ve never seen one like President Trump.”

For one thing, he apparently lies much more often than the average person. For another, Trump’s lies are rarely made to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, like many of us do (“Why yes, I really do like your new, whatever-it-is you’re wearing.”) Instead, Donald Trump’s lies are often the opposite: insulting and hurtful. He lies to insult people much, much more often than almost all of the rest of us. In fact, according to records of his public comments, his lies are 10 times more likely to be malicious.

Come to think of it, having listened to Trump speak, maybe that isn’t too surprising either.

Then President Barack Obama and then President Elect Donald Trump (Pete Souza).

We live in a political era in which several Americans presidents in a row have been severely criticized, often with claims they violated the U.S. Constitution, and hit with calls for their removal. The current one, Donald Trump, is certainly no exception.

Just in the last few days, a senator claimed President Trump had “castrated” the Secretary of State; Trump named a woman who denies climate change and who calls wind and solar power parasitic to be energy advisor; Trump’s campaign has been subpoenaed over sexual assault charges; and U.S. states are suing over Trump’s move to destroy the Affordable Care Act.

While the numbers of such battles and accusations is very high right now, battles between the president and constitutionalists is nothing new. To put a perspective on what’s happening now, it may be time to reflect on battles that happened before Donald Trump or Barack Obama before him were elected to America’s highest office.

JANUS-Tête-à-Tête photo by Pete Souza. This image is a work of an employee of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

“Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.” That’s by Jeff Flake, Republican senator from Arizona. It’s in a piece entitled, “My Party Is in Denial About Donald Trump.”

Admittedly Flake is from Arizona, a state where Republicans like he and fellow Senator John McCain can say what they really believe about Trump without fear of it destroying their re-election chances. But in this excerpt from his new book Conscience of a Conservative, he points out how conservatives focusing on fighting Barack Obama instead of working for conservative values helped put Donald Trump in the White House. And while he says liberals are to blame as well, he wisely leaves it up them to “answer for their own sins.”

It’s pretty clear that virtually no leaders in the Republican or Democratic Party are happy with Donald Trump as president. No living president of either party voted for him. Even Vice President Mike Pence strongly disagreed with and distanced himself from Trump more than once before the election.

I believe, as does Flake, that’s it’s time for the Republican Party to assert its own values. It may be necessary for the party to recreate itself. It’s done that successfully before, notably after Republicans Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and President Richard M. Nixon both resigned from office in the midst of scandals. A few years later, it was a new Republican Party, and the new president was Ronald Reagan.

But things have to change if the Republican Party is to retain any semblance of its values. “If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?”

Donald Trump on cover of Playboy. Cover is linked and copyrighted and appears here for illustrative purposes.

Some of Donald Trump’s most prominent supporters are now backing away because of a 10-year-old tape in which he jokes about kissing women without asking and grabbing their genitals. Why? Haven’t they been paying attention?

The three-time married Donald Trump had an affair with his then future-second wife while married to his first, and impregnated her. He’s bragged about his womanizing in both speech and writing.

In addition, he promised to water-board terrorist suspects (which could include women) and do “more than that” even if it meant violating international treaties against torture. He promised to bomb fighters in Syria and “take our their families,” killing innocents including women and children in acts which could well be treated as war crimes, and then take their oil and sell it.

Then he wanted to violate the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion by barring all Muslims (including women) from coming to America.

His primary campaign slogan is “Make America Great Again,” which literally means he is saying that America, which certainly includes women, is not a great nation. (If you don’t believe that’s what it means, ask an English teacher.)

What happened with his continuing statements that were so outrageous they could be considered increasingly Anti-American? His popularity in America increased.

Now a 10-year-old tape of him making crude comments about women to another guy surfaces. So what? These are the same sort of comments probably millions of American men say to other American men when there aren’t any women around. But suddenly many of his supporters are shocked at Donald Trump’s morality in regard to women.

Yes, Donald Trump, whom I originally predicted had almost no chance, is well ahead. Yes, there’s a chance Trump could get the votes necessary to virtually secure the Republican nomination before the convention. Yes, Cruz lost Indiana, a key state.

But Ted Cruz was expected to lose Indiana. And there is a reasonable chance Trump would not gain enough delegates to secure the nomination with both Cruz and John Kasich still in the race before the Republican National Convention. Without enough delegations, the nomination would have been up for grabs. It could have gone to Cruz, Kasich, or even someone else.

I can understand why Kasich dropped out of the race. He was trailing a very distant third, and it was highly unlikely he’d get enough delegates to have a chance. With Cruz out, Trump virtually has the Republican nomination. Probably only Cruz could have stopped it.

“It’s great to be at Trump Tower. It’s great to be in a wonderful city, New York. And it’s an honor to have everybody here. This is beyond anybody’s expectations.” — Donald Trump, June 15, 2015

What was beyond most of our expectations was that Donald Trump would run for president of the United States.

But why not? The odds stacked against him won’t stop him. He even tried and failed to get “You’re Fired!” trademarked. (Let that sink in–trademarking “you’re fired”–and see more odd trademark attempts here).

Well, the reality show where he used that catch phrase is on hiatus (translation: the network doesn’t want to actually say it cancelled the show in case something extraordinary happens that could bring it back–like, say, its star running for president?)

I heard an opinion on NPR (sorry; I didn’t catch the name) who said this is a win-win situation for Trump. If he wins the presidency, he wins. If he doesn’t win, he get the publicity he craves so he still wins.

Unless American politics has gone completely hair wire, Donald Trump has about as much chance of getting the Republican nomination for President of the United States as I do. Hmm….

Hear Donald Trump announce his candidacy for President of the United States here.

An opinion of an individual member of The Loveshade Family does not necessarily reflect that of the whole family.